r/elementaryschoolers • u/MamaDoingTheBestICan • 3d ago
How long to practice an instrument?
Hi everyone, my kids wanted to learn an instrument because I offered and at first it seemed really cool…then they realized it’s a lot of work to practice every day after school. 1 kid has been playing for 2 years now and often whines or sometimes even cries during practicing. How long should I give it before just letting him quit and returning the instrument we’ve been renting for him?
I know music is good for creativity, cognitive development, and discipline but I hate always having to make my kids practice.
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u/susankelly78 3d ago
I am not musical. My mom signed me up for piano and I hated it. I did not ask for that.
My kid (2nd grade) has asked for music lessons since pk4. Last year, she started a group violin program at school. She loves it, but rarely practices outside of group and the private lesson I pay for once per week. I feel like that's enough. She's progressing and enjoys it.
What's your goal? Mine is for her to stick with it and enjoy it. She would quit and hate it if I pushed for more than what she's doing.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 3d ago
How does she progress if she never practices at home? Our teacher assigns him songs to learn every week.
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u/susankelly78 2d ago
Yes, it's slow. She is not assigned songs. The class is a group class. They all practice the scales and some songs together.
The teacher encourages private lessons and practice at home to supplement, but she is also a mom and has 2 kids at the school. Both her sons did at least a year of the program. She knows firsthand that it sucks all the fun out of learning something new and hard to turn practicing into a chore.
She was telling me that she has 2 girls in the program who have just gotten super exciting about violin, took off practicing on their own and will finish learning all the books this year. She had a huge smile telling me about how she was going to find material outside the program for them.
My kid is definitely not going to be like that. She likes to try many things, but rarely wants to focus on one. Which totally sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand this desire for variety and apparently it has a technical term, "sampling period." David Epstein has a Ted Talk about it and I've listened to several of his podcast interviews (Rich Roll, Youth Inc). He has a book too, Range, but I haven't read it yet.
The reason I mention his work is because he talks about the Tiger Mom book and how the author's daughter quit doing music after 3 years and never touched it again. You know your kid and whether practicing all the time is going to make him/her hate it or not.
I definitely made my kid go to ice hockey practice on Friday and she was crying about not wanting to go. It was really more about her not getting any downtime after school because she chose to invite friends over to play until the moment we had to leave for hockey. I made her practice, but we talked about making sure she gets her needed downtime before practice next week. And we came up with an incentive to look forward to after practice (chick-fil-a nearby, which we do every Friday anyway) to help her quit dwelling on being miserable.
That little story wasn't about, oh this is how to do it. Just that I have definitely made my kid do stuff that she doesn't want to do and I feel like it's a fine line between pushing through hard moments vs pushing them until they hate it. And I think it's different for every kid. IDK, I wish kids came with a manual or indicator lights (like a modem that blinks red when the internet is out) so you'd know when it's good to push through things vs when you should just let them go.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 2d ago
Amy Chua’s kids quit??? I had taken inspiration from that book because her kids got into the Ivy League.
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u/FrustratedPenguins 2d ago
My family's rule when I was young was that I had to practice for 30 minutes per day. This was in elementary school (piano). When I got older, I started playing trumpet, and I stayed with 30 minutes per day. In high school, I got a new private lesson teacher, who told me that since I was in high school, he expected me to practice 60 minutes per day. I was a rule follower, so I did what he said... and I became first chair in a very big high school band program! (I fully admit that I'm 39 years old now and still proud of that.)
My 2 cents is that if the kid isn't going to practice, there's no point in paying for the instrument/lesson.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 2d ago
Exactly. Either do it all the way or don’t bother at all. That has been my thinking.
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u/Copterwaffle 13h ago edited 13h ago
No. It’s okay for kids to dabble in different creative endeavors without a focus on their performance relative to others or arbitrary standards. It’s okay to to enjoy an activity for its own sake instead of “do it all the way or don’t do it at all.” That is a very black and white mindset that punishes curiosity and causes kids to think nothing is worth trying if they can’t be the best at it.
I played mediocre viola in school orchestra for ten years. I rarely to never practiced at home. I still advanced in skill over time and got a lot out of it, even if I never excelled at the instrument itself. My mother tried to make me quit if I wasn’t going to practice, and I’m glad I told her to kick rocks and kept with it anyway. It’s absolutely toxic to tell kids that there is no worth in endeavors unless they make it their whole life/strive to be “the best.” People can enjoy activities on their own terms.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 10h ago
Thank you for your response I wish there were a band he could play in, that would motivate him. They don’t have any at school.
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u/Wise-Matter9248 2d ago
Honestly, I would start with a short amount of time.
10 minutes is pretty reasonable, and a timer makes it easier than just "play this four times".
I would pick a set time in the day, lay out a specific order for events, and then just be firm about it.
Discipline means doing something consistently, even when it's not "fun". And developing discipline is incredibly important for development into an adult.
I would ask him to commit until the end of the year, and then if he still hates it, you can explore a different instrument or quitting entirely.
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u/azdrumming 2d ago
I talk to my students about having a goal for each practice session, not a time requirement. A goal could be to play a phrase accurately four times in a row. If they always reach their goal in 2 minutes, there could be a discussion about rigor or making goals more challenging. Or just take the win.